Trans & Queer People are worth your time
My soul is hurting for the 23 victims of the Colorado LGBTQIA+ Shooting, five of whom will never experience another moment of joy. My soul aches thinking about their final moments of terror, as they realized the reclamation of their Queerness and how it exists in space would be their final mode of existence. My heart rips thinking about their loved ones, how they are currently yearning to dance with their spouses, longing to interlock fingers, unable to process that their friends, lovers and partners are dead.
It’s sickening that this shooting took place on the dawn of Transgender Day of Remembrance. The shooter reminds us that we can’t mourn the last cohort of lives that were wrongfully taken before we face the next. And we can’t be fully present in centering the resilience of Trans lives, because we must also be resilient for ourselves. There is confusion as to where we should look. There are so many places. Inward, outward, onward. But nothing really cures the fact that society is perpetually moving backward.
I don’t know what to say or think. I don’t know how to keep moving forward without feeling that I am an undeserving beneficiary of luck or protection. But, I feel pride knowing members of my community died dancing, in the presence of group love and pop music. They died with dignity, and this is how I too pray to go. They died taking up space, something I am trying to do every day. For that, they will forever be my guiding Angels, the deities of my unreligious life.
They remind me that Queerness extends beyond myself and how I take up space. It is about finding who has been othered, sidelined, stepped on, and centering them. It is through heartbreaking moments like this that I’m reminded existing in Queer space will always be a radical act — an unfinished one at that. Queerness won’t be entirely realized until it is unapologetically everywhere, and thus my existence as a member of the Queer community isn’t fully realized.
Last month, in honor of LGBTQIA+ History month, I created the Trans and Queer Media Project. Saddened by the heinous ways Trans characters are relentlessly crafted as murderers, pedophiles and victims of violence, I wanted to create a project aimed at centering positive, joyful representations of Trans and Queer folks. The media project is a giant piece of butcher paper, covered in images from movies, shows, actors, musicians and other types of media.
It is hung in the Student Workroom of the LGBTQ+ Student Center. I’m hoping to donate it to the ONE archives, USC’s LGBTQ+ Archive, once it is finished.
In the past month at the LGBTQ+ Center, we also hosted three programs for the project. The most recent was a screening of the movie “Tangerine” (2015), a golden depiction of an evening with two Los Angeles-based Trans sex workers. It was a beautiful way for everyone, both inside and outside of the Trans community to learn. To hold space. Five people came to the program, our highest turnout yet. I could cry thinking about how gratifying it was to have people show up for the event. That experience gave me a glimpse into what it might be like to be Trans in America. To feel that nobody or at most five people could show up.
As I balance aiming to locate Queer joy for myself — wanting it to be a private matter that is sacred to my body — with the reality that Trans and Queer people have been and will continue to be disproportionately violated, I am brought back to the wise words of José Esteban Muñoz. I am reminded that I am not yet Queer, I am only verging on the horizon of Queerness. As his book is titled, we are only “Cruising Utopia.” I do not yet know Queer joy, I only know moments of it.
Finding Queerness will be deeply intertwined with lifting some of the world’s largest burdens for me. From the rampant anti-Blackness that continues to kill — and affect society in every way possible — to the lack of protection and solidarity in society for sex workers. From the way we sideline and ignore people facing neurodivergence, disability and chronic pain to the way we perpetually make dark, fat and short people feel undesirable. The way these issues culminate for Black Trans sex workers who end up disproportionately sexually abused, homeless, and hurt. These issues, as stated by Queer Black women for decades — are deeply intertwined; none of us are free until all of us are.
Sometimes it feels that I am too privileged and too far-removed to have a stake in this game. I hurt for other people, but how much can I really understand? Positionality matters. My lack of first-hand experience with many nuanced and deeply complicated issues and identities limits my perspective. But ultimately, it is my empathy that will allow me to seek understanding. My traumatizing experiences — to me at least — are a deeply valuable tool. They give me insight as to how it feels.
I will continue to pull people in who know more than me and I will never be fully realized. That is my commitment in this deeply confusing, angering, sad world.
To all the Queer and Trans people taking up space, you deserve space and energy and your Queerness deserves nourishment — whatever that looks like. Go blow some bubbles, kiss your hand, and never stop checking in on the people you love. And to the non-Queer, cis, het folks, take a moment to look into our eyes before you violate us. Consider — even just for a moment — our humanity. It can change everything.
Arjun Bhargava is a sophomore writing about differing identities and their role in our larger political & cultural landscape. Their column, “The Girls Are Gagged” runs every other Thursday.